Producers have long used beneficial microbial cultures to seeds, seedlings, soils and/or plants to reduce various biotic and abiotic stresses that significantly limit crop yields. These microbial cultures are commercially available as inoculant products that are distributed as dry powders or in bulk liquid form to the producers for end-use application. Such distribution of the inoculant products often subjects the microbial cultures to environmental abuse which, in turn, introduces undesirable variability in culture viability and physiological activity at the time of application. Stabilization of cells through formulation and spore formation does not adequately preclude cell death during manufacturing and distribution of such inoculants, leading to a decrease in effectiveness and reliability of the inoculants.
Microbial inoculant products can experience significant declines in population during their limited shelf life. This is a source of a significant amount of waste in materials, water, and energy relative to the benefits supplied by such products. Current microbial products are typically fermented in large centralized manufacturing facilities, then concentrated and/or centrifuged in order to increase populations above the label values, thereby allowing the manufacturers to account for the death of viable organisms during shipping and storage. Other attempted solutions to reduce loss of microbial inoculant viability include introducing ingredients to the bulk liquid culture to retard microbial metabolism and oxidation, putting the cells in an essentially inactive state for packaging and distribution. Thus, a significant problem in the expanding biologicals market sector is the inconsistent performance in the field of such inoculant products resulting from low levels of initial activity and/or low percent cell viability at the time of application.
Most inoculant products in the market today tend to have sub-optimal performance in many locations, due at least in part to the fact that such available inoculant products use microbes that are not well adapted to local conditions. Often, the success of a particular inoculant product can depend on the plant species and cultivar to which the inoculant product is applied. Also, the adaptability of the microbe in the inoculant product to local soil conditions and the ability to establish beneficial microbe populations around the plant zone can also affect the success and usefulness of the inoculant. However, microbial inoculant products use microbes that have been selected more on the basis of ability to survive the delivery supply chain than in-field performance. For example, many inoculant products contain spore formers such as Bacillus spp. and Trichoderma spp. that have some ability to survive harsh conditions of distribution and storage, but may not provide the optimal results desired for end use applications. While non-spore formers such as Pseudomonas spp. have been shown to have beneficial effects on multiple crops, use of such non-spore formers have not achieved widespread distribution due to incompatibility with current distribution methods.
Since the inoculant products contain living organisms, how the inoculant products are prepared, and then applied, can significantly affect the outcome. There is a need for systems and methods for providing easy-to-use, reliable, and viable microbial inoculants.